The Summer I Died: A Thriller by Ryan C. Thomas, Cody Goodfellow Page A

and pulled free from the slack. She slithered out from her binds, leaving a sickening trail of melted fle sh and blood on the floor like snail mucus . Tooth was screaming at her, “ Get up! Get up and untie us! ”
    But she wasn’t listening; she was out of her mind in pain. She fl opped on the ground like a wind- up toy that had fallen over, her feet kicking slowly, and lay with her back against the wall so I co uldn’t see what damage had been done. Tooth kept yelling through his swollen, purple face. I couldn’t stand it. She wasn’t getting up, and I fucking hated her for it.
    “ C’mon! Bitch, m ove! ” I screamed.
    Unbelievable , this was our chance to escape and it wasn’t going to happen because this poor woman, who by all rights should have been dead by now, who was suffering beyond all human endurance, wouldn’t listen to us. Still, I pleaded because what option did we have? “ Get up! Please get up! Please, please, please! ”
    I kept chanting the “ get up ” mantra for several minutes before I heard Tooth’s voice. “ Enough, Roger. Enough. ” He must have been saying it for a while because he was very calm, and the room was hot as a car engine fresh from a circuit race. I got the feeling I’d been yelling for longer than I realized. “ Enough. She’s dead. ”
    She was motionless, that was for sure. Her eyes were closed. Blood coated the entire floor; I looked down and saw I was standing in it. “ She’s not dead, ” I replied. “ Look, her chest is moving. ”
    Like a light breeze, her chest moved up and down. You had to look hard to see it but it was happening.
    “ Holy shit. How can she take that much abuse and not die? ”
    “ I want to go home, ” I said, my adrenaline finally seeping away.
    “ I think my jaw is broken. Oh, man, it fucking hurts. ”
    “ He’s going to kill us. We’re going to die and he’s going to torture us and kill us. Oh God, I don’t want to die. ”
    “ Listen, my car is still parked out there. Someone will see it and call the cops if we can just last — ”
    “ Lot of good that’ll do. We’ll be dead by then or at least wish we were. ”
    He hung his head down and sighed.
    “ We should have gone shooting at the other place. ”
    That pissed me off. Was he blaming me for this? I never expected this to happen. Hell, he was the freak with the arsenal. We’d never have been out here if he hadn’t gone Rambo while I was at college. “ Fuck you, Tooth. Why did you have to be a hero? Why did you need to find this woman? What did you have to go and shoot the dog for? ”
    “ Because it was trying to eat me. Fuck, Roger, I’m not blaming you. ”
    On the floor, our burnt cellmate started groaning. She actually sat up and rubbed her head.
    “ Easy, ” I said. “ Can you hear us? ”
    She looked up at me and I felt a renewed sense of hope. Maybe she could get us out of here after all. Maybe I’d shit gold bricks and marry Nicole Kidman, but still . . . maybe. She looked like a giant slab of half-cooked bacon covered in ketchup, and I couldn’t believe I was even looking at her without puking. With a bewildered expression on her blood-soaked face, she put a hand in the gooey skin-fat-blood mixture around her ass and sat still. Her shirt , now burned away in back, hung loose around her.
    “ What’s your name? ” Tooth asked her.
    Her eyes drifted over to him and her mouth muscles attempted to form words but nothing came out.
    “ You need medical attention, ” he said.
    Medical attention? Shit, she needed a priest.
    “ If you can unchain us we can get you to a hospital, ” Tooth continued. “ Can you move? ”
    Her answer consisted of spit dribbling down her chin and some feeble rocking. It was hard to tell if she was trying to stand up or if she was just having a breakdown. It was an infuriating moment and I kept thinking she was trying to help us but somehow I knew she wasn’t going to do jack shit but sit and die slowly.
    Then, like an